Charge, Mass, and Inertia as Saturated Responses

Overview

This article presents a conceptual and structural analysis of three fundamental physical notions: mass, electric charge, and inertia. Although these quantities play a central role in modern physics, their mutual relation and conceptual origin are usually treated as independent.

The analysis proposes a unified interpretation in which mass, charge, and inertia arise as effective descriptors of saturated response within a non-injective relational description. No new dynamical laws or microscopic degrees of freedom are introduced. The construction is explicitly effective and does not claim a unique microscopic derivation.

Scope statement. This page provides a structured summary. The authoritative technical reference is the preprint linked above.

Core contributions

Unified interpretation: mass, charge, and inertia arise from a single saturated-response mechanism.
Symmetry classification: minimal isotropic, oriented, and finite-resolution responses correspond to distinct physical properties.
No modification of the Standard Model: gauge structure, particle content, and dynamics remain unchanged.
Conceptual clarity: physical parameters interpreted as effective descriptors rather than primitive substances.
Framework independence: compatible with a broad class of relational and pre-geometric approaches.

Consistency with established physics

The proposed interpretation is fully consistent with Standard Model phenomenology. The Higgs mechanism retains its role in mass generation, gauge invariance and charge conservation are preserved, and no deviations are predicted in experimentally tested regimes.

All known particle-physics phenomena correspond to the linear, unsaturated regime of the effective description. Saturation effects play a structural and interpretative role, while remaining inactive in experimentally tested regimes.

Relation to the Cosmochrony program

This article is self-contained and can be read independently. It contributes to the broader Cosmochrony program by clarifying the structural origin of mass, charge, and inertia, but does not rely on the detailed developments of other papers for its internal coherence.

References

Jérôme Beau. Charge, Mass, and Inertia as Saturated Responses of a Pre-Geometric Relational Description. Preprint, Zenodo. 10.5281/zenodo.18488987